UK’s Johnson: ‘Strong possibility’ Brexit talks will fail

BRUSSELS (AP):

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says there is a “strong possibility” that talks on a post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU will end without agreement.

The UK and the EU have given themselves a deadline of Sunday to unlock their gridlocked trade talks.

But after a meeting with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ended without a breakthrough, Johnson said there is “a strong possibility – that we will have a solution that is much more like an Australian relationship with the EU than a Canadian relationship with the EU”.

Australia does not have a free trade deal with the EU, while Canada does.

With a chaotic and costly no-deal Brexit only three weeks away, gloom settled on both sides of the English Channel as European Union and United Kingdom trade negotiators sought to find a breakthrough in technical talks where their leaders failed three times in political discussions over the past week.

Facing a Sunday deadline set after inconclusive talks between EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Wednesday night, both sides realised their drawn-out four-year divorce might well end on bad terms.

“I am a bit more gloomy today, as far as I can hear,” said Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven at a EU summit where von der Leyen briefed the 27 leaders on her unsuccessful dinner with Johnson.

“She was not really confident that all difficulties could be resolved,” said David Sassoli, the president of the EU parliament which will have to approve any deal brokered. A cliff-edge departure that would threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs and tens of billions in commerce was coming ever closer.

To prepare for a sudden exit on January 1, the EU yesterday proposed four contingency measures to make sure that at least air and road traffic would continue between both sides as smoothly as possible for the next six months.

It also proposes that fishermen will still have access to each other’s waters for up to a year, to limit the commercial damage of a no-deal split. The plans depend on the UK offering similar initiatives. The move was indicative of how the EU saw a bad break-up as ever more realistic.

Britain has not said whether it will agree to the contingency measures. Johnson’s spokesman, Jamie Davies, said “we will obviously look very closely at the details”.

For months now, trade talks have faltered on Britain’s insistence that as a sovereign nation it must not be bound indefinitely to EU rules and regulations even if it wants to export freely to the bloc. That same steadfastness has marked the EU in preserving its cherished single market and seeking guarantees against a low-regulation neighbour that would be able to undercut its businesses.